Singapore drops four spots in happiness ranking; still the happiest country in Asia

We still got it, people. Singaporeans are the happiest people in Asia once again, according to the 2017 World Happiness Report. But compared to citizens of other nations in the world, we’re not as happy as we were last year — Singapore took 26th spot out of 155 countries this year, dropping four places from its 2016 ranking.

Coming in first with a happiness score of 7.537 was Norway, while the Central African Republic fell to the other end of the spectrum with a score of 2.693. Singapore’s score this year was 6.572.

Published by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Solutions Network, this report assesses each country’s ‘subjective well-being’ with citizens rating their life satisfaction on a 1 to 10 scale. Other stats like the nation’s economic strength, life expectancy and perceived corruption are also taken into consideration.

Rounding up the top ten of the list were countries like Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, while the bottom ten included Yemen, South Sudan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, Syria, Tanzania, and Burundi. The top four happiest countries had high rankings on factors like health, income, freedom and good governance.

As for rankings around the region, Thailand came in 32nd, Taiwan 33rd, Malaysia 42nd and Japan 51st.